Sketchbook of Straw (Cover Art)

Even as the snow once again covers Ichabod's Cottage (seems like there has been snow on the bogle since late October), the Bindlegrim goblins have remained busy at work with lots of new spooky goodies for 2012.

The holiday was a great time to get some writing done, and work is progressing on that new collection of Bindlegrim short stories (and perhaps poetry) called Sketchbook of Straw. There are two dark tales written and edited: The Jitter Dance and The Herbivorous Witch for definite inclusion. A third tale is undergoing editing and there is some back-and-forth decisions on if this lighter tale (along with the 4th lighter story now being written) will be included in the same volume - perhaps this will be a book with sections for darker and lighter moods?

As shown above, in preparation for the cover, I've been going through some of my old pen/pencil drawings from sketchbooks (which seemed appropriate) of the late 1980's to the early 1990's - when I was thoroughly enjoying the world of surreal and abstract art, with influences such as Dali, Miro, Tanguy, and Klee to name a few. Above are a few working ideas of how the cover might appear.

As if this wasn't enough to keep the goblins busy with all those art and literary pursuits (I'm not sure exactly when there will be enough stories to complete a full volume), there are also some design pursuits occurring with vintage-style Halloween lanterns for 2012, and keep an eye out for that news too!

Pumpkin Dream Sketchbooks #1: Surreal

Some days before deciding (for certain) on a more vintage, representational style for "The Pumpkin Dream" there was some thought of creating pen drawings, and in a more surreal style, somewhat more akin to the pen and ink drawings seen here on wobblebox. There was really only one sketch to speak of in this mode - seen below where there was an attempt to take elements from the poem, and then sit down for a session of surrealistic doodles... (this sketch would have paired with the first eight lines of the poem):

When tattered oaks of autumn lend
prophetic chatter to the wind
and gremlins from a branch dispatch
with felon deeds upon your latch

We trust our tale illuminates
of bogymen whose hunger slake
on children in a sugar feast
the fearless know as trick-or-treat

While I would still love to find the time to do this illustration style (perhaps in some later edition down the road), the thought of trying to create 37 drawings that I would be happy with... while so many other tasks needed to also be done (this book was DIY on everything), I gave this up for something I thought would be more editable - vector art (see the first blog entry Sketchy Beginnings and/or A Brief History of The Pumpkin Dream (Part 4) - Cautionary Vectors).

Well, in going back into my sketchbooks, it appears I did almost a full round of more representational style art, and then for some reason (probably the zero budget) vacillated back toward the possibility of pen and paper once again (see below). I think this next drawing (probably inspired more so by being very tired) was a thought toward doing something sort of retro, loose, and surreal with lots and lots of negative space.  And I was apparently still trying to figure out the first lines of the poem, which were perhaps the hardest lines of the poem to complete - and there are likely hundreds of versions of the beginning)....

I guess part of me is very interested in Halloween imagery with a little surrealistic twist - and in looking back through the sketchbook - even before the idea to do "The Pumpkin Dream" was settled in my mind... I found this whimsical drawing that takes the Jack O'Lantern into some weird realms - such as the octo-pumpkin?

Next up: Pumpkin Sketchbooks #2: Versions

A Brief History of the Pumpkin Dream: (Part 6) - Swing You Sinners!

Continued from:
A Brief History of The Pumpkin Dream: (Part 5) - Monsters from the Id

Okay, so finally, I found my way to the end solution for illustrating this book project - Inkscape (a vector-art freeware program). Contrary to the shading and modeling of images occurring in the previous blog (with Corel Painter 11), the actual goal was to create simply-designed characters that could be easily manipulated for every eight lines of the poem, whenever a new image was needed.

Coming from years of working will Adobe Illustrator (and still a bit sad about Illustrator not being compatible on the new system) the learning curve was frustrating. I slowed down quite a bit to read the software instructions, and decided to at first just try to work with simple shapes - combining them, splitting them, playing with the line points, etc - which wasn't too far from my final goal. And here are a couple of the early character drafts with Inkscape :

Our main character here in mouse outfit.

Trick-or-Treat Witch
(Olive Green absolutely only accepts coven-approved sweets).

Duo of Trickster-Treaters

Also, at this time, I was re-ingesting lots of 1930s animation for inspiration (see end images part 4). In particular, I have always been fascinated with 1930's Fleischer Studios (Koko the Clown, Bimbo, Betty Boop). I would set the screen on freeze, and pencil sketch the images.

The next test was to see how well I could recreate characters from source sketches. I had sketched the tree below from a great little piece called "Swing you Sinners" (see YouTube video below) that involves a character who finds a soul full of trouble when he gets caught in a graveyard. The character below is one of the singing trees in the graveyard, and it turned out that InkScape was nice for pen-tracing sketched characters with the Wacom.

(Also, click here to view my old-school Halloween animation playlist)

So between the tree (with a few borrowed and scattered limbs), and maybe the walking house near the end, etc., together with tons of old school Halloween inspiration... the image below was my first of a few versions that finally culminated in the final style for the imagery:

(The North Wind (Peter Max ala Saw) was nixed here for a more Halloween-ish sky).

Whew, well this generally decided, this then started two months of intense illustrating! For every eight lines of poetry,  my goal was to create a drawing - 37 illustrations in all...., so, as far as the blog is concerned, I think from here I'll take a break on this whole "history" of the book set-up and maybe just dabble in a bit of postings about sketch to digital translations... perhaps...

A Brief History of The Pumpkin Dream (Part 4) - Cautionary Vectors

A continuation from A Brief History of The Pumpkin Dream (Part 3)

As the idea to illustrate "October Dreams: A Cautionary Tale" became an objective, a new problem developed: I had recently switched systems and my ancient web developer's student copy of Adobe Photoshop 5 and Illustrator 8 (from 1999...!?) would no longer work on the newer system -- and I certainly couldn't afford to buy those expensive Adobe programs and still complete this project. I was very depressed about this situation, feeling once again I was trying to take on another project beyond my means...

As I tried to figure out what to do, I thought I should at least dabble with some trial dowloads to see if it was worth the loss of funds (and touch up on some old skills). My first trial was with Illustrator CS5. And I thought it would be fun to see how well I could re-create, and accurately, some old vintage Halloween Decorations.

These cats are from a Beistle Halloween decoration from the 1950's: the top is a scan of the original and the lower image is a wacom pen trace (with some obvious color tweaks). I'm not sure I had really learned how to use the pressure sensitivity at this point - but I did appreciate Illustrator's ability to selectively drag out and increase line widths in certain areas along the line.

The next images is from a frightening looking pumpkin face from 1931 by Dennison. Again, I couldn't quite figure out how to use the pressure sensitivity to achieve fatter/thinner lines. With this guy I drew the shapes and used lower layers to ink in the color areas. And I believe I was using a new ability to paint vector swaths. (The upper version is scanned - the lower version is my wacom trace vector version):

In both instances I was happy with how accurately the images could be created into vector! This wasn't very helpful though, because Illustrator CS5 was still out of reach. (I wish Adobe would let you upgrade in installments toward having the entire suite. There was no way I was going to buy Illustrator which I needed first, then later buy each program separately and spend even more money to get needful Photoshop, Premiere, etc).

As I tried to figure out what to do - the trials continued with AI CS5 on my own work...

Mentioned previously, I had a sketchbook full of work from trying to develop a three-dimensional project. As raw material, it then seemed logical to recreate these sketches. I imagined this might then be a good way of developing and creating my illustrations for the poem. My first go was with this scarecrow sketch:

See also my additional test manually/digitally recreating pencil sketches in the first blog entry (Sketchy Beginnings that shows working with the main characters of the poem).

I really enjoyed this.. and may have been getting a tad better at using looser pen strokes and wacom tablet sensitivity with Illustrator... however, my trial period was running out.. and the money was just not there for it!

A friend noted that Painter by Corel was a good program for looser pen work, and it might cost less... and that seems like a good place to start the next entry. Part 5 will cover some testing with Painter and, after that, what became my final solution for my budget - freeware!

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On a side note (6/5/11), as I was writing Part 5, it occurred to me, I had tried a test of Illustrator's automatic sketch feature. It's a pretty nifty tool. Below is my sketch followed by the Illustrator output. (Note the settings were used to recreate an image that was as simple and graphic and possible, and the output was tweaked just a bit afterward using the new vector blob brush to smooth edges, and create large areas of black).

This was an important test, because as I was also searching for the right program, I was firming up my ideas for the style of illustration - and this was starting to narrow down a goal - to create a style that was reminiscent of old 1930s cartoon animation.

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A Brief History of The Pumpkin Dream: Part 5 - Monsters from the Id

Japanese Toy Sketchbooks

for a completely random thought, (and i have no idea how i discovered this site the first time) but the following is a wonderful database of old japanese watercolor sketchbooks from the 19th and early 20th century showing a collection of toy designs... search long enough and you will find lots of great creatures and some spooky masks...

http://ningyodo.library.pref.osaka.jp/index.html

as for events here - excited to receive the first run of notes back from the editor on the poem. which leads me to wonder at what point editors see both text and illustrations for an image heavy book...? i have another doc that pairs the stanzas with the images, but hesitate to send it. it seems working on the illustrations has made it hard for  me to concentrate on the poem itself... and i would hate my editor to fall to the same fate.

in the meantime, just doing some tweaks to the look of this blog... and thinking how i will approach an official website...